Hasta La Creative!

Dollar Shave Club, the Unilever-owned male grooming subscription service, is creating a hub for people to try out its products as it marks its launch in the UK.

Similar to the rise of social or mobile apps, voice requires new strategies, knowledge and understanding, says Arnold Worldwide’s AI strategy lead.

Welcome to Ad Age’s Wake-Up Call, our daily roundup of advertising, marketing, media and digital-related news. You can get an audio version of this briefing on your Alexa device. Search for “Ad Age” under “Skills” in the Alexa app.

What people are talking about today: CVS is getting body-positive: The drugstore giant says it’s cracking down on photo-shopping of beauty imagery it uses in stores, online and in marketing materials. It created a heart-shaped insignia which it calls “CVS Beauty Mark” — that it will stamp on images that have not been significantly altered. The goal is to have its own brand’s beauty images free of touch-ups by April 2019, it’s putting pressure on its suppliers to join in, as USA Today reports. “The nation’s largest drugstore chain will also require other makeup and beauty brands that sell products in its aisles to commit to a photo-manipulation ban by 2020 or face having an alert label placed on the images,” USA Today says. It’s feasible some beauty brands could be squeamish about showing model’s pores and wrinkles. (Procter & Gamble, L’Oreal and Coty, any thoughts?) But seriously, how many consumers will object to this? Bring on the freckles and laugh lines. We can handle it.

Not so body-positive

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The tech that’s most likely to survive post-CES hype is voice but brands should rethink their gendered approach.

Thriva, the healthcare company, has created a 12ft lump of real fat to show how much weight people are gaining in the UK.

Radio is enjoying a revival, as technological advances drive its evolution as an innovative and progressive ad medium, Flora Williams, account director at Amplifi.

Havas London chief executive Xavier Rees is taking charge of sister customer engagement agency Havas Helia, replacing Tash Whitmey.

Sereena Abbassi, the founder of All Here, an organisation that seeks to help agencies and brands think more critically about the world and the work that they create, is on a mission to deliver tangible solutions to the advertising industry’s much lamented diversity problem.

• Read more about KFC “Colonel Sanders : La Legende, L’homme, Le Poulet” (2018) 1:30 (France)
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Great, just what we needed after “Fire and Fury”: Shitholegate.

And, for good measure, a media debate about whether to print or broadcast the word “shithole.”

The Washington Post, which broke Shitholegate, went with a subdued headline on today’s front page”Immigration offer on ‘dreamers’ fails” followed by the subhead “Trump profanely assails some countries”and waited until the second paragraph of its report to quote Trump’s use of “shithole” sans asterisks or other censorship (e.g., “s***hole”):

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